Off the Beaten Path

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Forget the want ads. Other forms of advertising can pull, too. Ira Patton, CEO of Patton General Contracting, advertises forhelp on television. To recruit for his $11.1 million residential remodeling company in Charleston, S.C., Patton uses TV adsthat include an 800 number. "It gets good people -- the ones that already have jobs who aren't looking through the classifieds,"he says. The do-it-yourself production for a 60-second ad cost Patton about $500.

Patton isn't the only entrepreneur to get good results from nontraditional help-wanted advertising. Michael Pehl, CEO ofi-Cube, a Cambridge, Mass., information technology consulting company with 1998 revenues of $41.2 million, ran a series oflarge billboard ads in the Boston area. One billboard, for example, targeted drivers exiting from Boston's airport with theimmodest message that i-Cube is "An Incredible Place to Work." Even at a cost of $10,000 to $15,000 per month (includingdesign fees), Pehl views the billboards as quite a bargain. "We'd pay the same thing to run a tiny one-day ad in the BostonSunday Globe," he says, "but the billboard sits there for 30 days."